


Fire and Sunshine

by alindy



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:44:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3139793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alindy/pseuds/alindy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Liz passes, Caroline learns to live again. As Stefan helps her rebuild, he finds himself jealous more often than he should over a certain British vampire, but mostly he just finds himself hopelessly in love with Caroline Forbes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire and Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> This was not meant to be so intense and kinda angsty. I was just prompted with this: Stefan gets jealous of enzo because he spends more time with caroline. He and enzo are competing for her trying to make her happy after she knew about her mother disease  
> I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED, I GOT CARRIED AWAY.  
> I hope you enjoy though, please let me know what you think!

Liz Forbes dies on a Thursday.

It is done quietly and peacefully and Caroline’s smile does not leave her face until time of death is called, but once the words leave the doctor’s mouth and it’s official, when Caroline knows for sure her mother will never breath again, the smile falls from Caroline’s face and to the floor. Her body weighs a million pounds, her heart drips and aches, and she can’t seem to do a damn thing, every part of her is _useless_. Her body topples over into a chair, and Enzo is there, grabbing her hand, looking her in the eyes and saying comforting things, things Caroline did not think him capable of.

This is how Stefan finds her, having been gone for only a half hour picking up food, and his heart rips apart as he sees her like this. She bleeds despair, dark like death, and the selfish part of Stefan, the cruel part he tries so very much to hide away, finds jealousy rooted within his range of emotions. Now is not the time to feel jealous of Enzo, it really isn’t, but Stefan has never claimed to be perfect, so that roots itself deep in his gut along with the agony that claws away at him. Caroline’s soft eyes find him, and she stands up, looking at him like he is a life raft at sea, and when she grabs him and pull hims in there is a part of himself that feels smug.

The good part of Stefan pushes it away, grabs onto her frail body and pets her hair, whispers the things he knows Caroline will understand, and that’s when she finally cracks. Caroline falls apart, more than ever before, and she screams and yells and cries. When gravity finally pulls her down, Stefan follows with her, scooting her between his legs and wrapping himself around her in every way he can. When she finally becomes silent and her eyes simply look dull and lifeless, Stefan kisses her forehead and picks her up, takes her home, and lets her rest.

* * *

Caroline stays in a room in the Salvatore Boarding House for two weeks without coming out. From time to time there are too many pairs of feet that storm through her bedroom door (Stefan thinks of it as hers now, and he wonders if that will make it worse when she decides to leave, her scent in the pillows and the memory of her residing there, looking too perfect among the relics of his past), Elena is stubborn, Enzo too quick to try to make her laugh, Damon strangely babying with blood bags he throws in and drinks he leaves on the bedside table, and Stefan wants to tell all of them to leave, to get the hell out, but then he would have to follow those words too, so he just scowls in the doorway and lets them be.

She doesn’t say anything for almost that long, too, only staring off into space or whispering things to herself like she needs to remember them, words falling like long forgotten prayers but only loud enough for her to hear. At some point she starts to write, and when she sits up in bed and lets the pen flow over the pages she goes for hours without a single breath, pushing the words out of her. Stefan does not try to ask what she writes, it feels too personal, but he does sit and watch, eyeing the crinkle of her forehead when she concentrates or the smoothness of her features when she stares off into nothing.

Caroline never comments on the people coming in and out, never tells anyone to go away or gets annoyed with them, but Stefan thinks he sees a sense of relief in her shoulders when they exit. She seems lighter when he’s around, and maybe that’s Stefan projecting or being hopeful or a culmination of a million other things, but her lips don’t look as tight and she sleeps far more peacefully when he is by her side.

So he stays by her side as long as he can. He stays too long and watches far too much and he thinks that maybe there was a time when the idea of this, of being so invested in Caroline Forbes might have been strange, but now it feels like breathing. There’s a part of him that worries about it, about that need, but if it’s a sin, it’s the happiest he’s ever been sinning before in his entire eternity.

* * *

One day Stefan walks in to find the bed made, some clothes still strewn across chairs, but Caroline is startlingly absent.

His mind flashes quickly to the worse case scenario, and all he can think about is blood and death and an empty pain in his gut from the thought of losing the spring of her blonde curls and the light wafting of her perfume as she walks away. Damon rolls his eyes, tells him to calm down, he’s pretty sure he saw her leave with Enzo sometime in the early morning, but Stefan’s eyes flash at the words.

Damon does not know it, but there are few things that would have made him worry more. He doesn’t go after her. She will be back, he reminds himself. Stefan tries to do the things he has been putting off, ignoring while he spent hours by Caroline’s side, but he can’t help how it feels like a betrayal for her to have left. His hands subconsciously twitch and clench with worry, anxiety, and there is a part of Stefan that feels inarguably mad.

He had forgotten how much it hurts to rely on a person so heavily, and at some point he had fallen down the rabbit hole again, only this time Caroline Forbes was on the other end. Never had he realized that he’d been doing it, giving himself away to these feelings and the way her eyes always seemed to see him, but now he finds himself too deep in and incapable of climbing out. He doesn’t think he would want to even if he could.

When she waltzes back in two days later, her shoulders still slumped but less so, Stefan feels a breath leave his body. He can’t tell if the breath releases him or empties him, and he thinks it might be a little bit of both. Caroline wears only the smallest of a smile on her lips, only a small curve at the right corner, but Enzo raises an eyebrow at him before he swings out of the door after saying goodbye. Stefan ignores the punch in his gut at the image of them hugging, way too comfortable for how long they’ve known each other, but really, that’s his fault, isn’t it?

If anyone has gotten himself into this situation, it’s Stefan Salvatore. He walked right into it himself, planted himself there and let the world flow around him whatever way it may chose. If he had known this was going to happen, that everything would go down the way it had, he would have chosen different. He thinks about it sometimes, late at night when sleep seems like such a petty concept, about what life could have been if he’d made all the right choices.

But what right means has become much blurrier the longer he’s lived, and he doesn’t quite know what falls underneath its classification anymore.

* * *

Enzo shows up far more frequently after that, always carrying a smile that slides too easily into a smirk and a joke ready to throw at anyone in his path. Caroline has started to smile a bit more now, her breaths come out of her body much lighter, her eyes focus more, and Stefan can’t help himself from smiling when she allows herself to. There’s a part of himself that wishes he was capable of doing it to her more often, but he takes what he can get.

Stefan wins the cup, though, when the two of them are playing chess. Caroline moans about the pieces, complaining again about why couldn’t they just play _checkers_ and who can keep all these rules straight _anyways_ , but then he makes some joke and says something so reminiscent of the past, so Caroline and Stefan sitting by the fire and talking about life, that Caroline smiles so largely Stefan thinks he might just be dreaming (that’s not too ridiculous of a notion, really, because though Stefan never used to dream he seems to wake up a lot of his days now with fleeting flashes of her face, twisted with a beaming smile and head thrown back in laughter).

Her smile stays strong for longer than it has in the past, but then it slips slightly and Stefan can see the thought cross her mind, cross her face. Caroline wonders how she can be so happy without _her_ , when everything is still so empty, and Stefan identifies with the need to hold on to the pain. He wishes he hadn’t set such an example for her of regret, of holding on, because then maybe she would have learned that moving on doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t really matter, though, because Caroline Forbes has always been her own woman, always will be, and Stefan loves that she does not need someone to define her when she is perfectly capable of doing it herself.

Caroline fights to regain the smile, her eyes meet Stefan’s and for a second they sit in silence, understanding the other and Stefan is struck again with how well she seems to see him, like she understands some part of himself that he still struggles to understand himself. How is she so _good_? Soulless, trampled, beaten, and she is the best of them all. She is sunshine, and Stefan grabs her hand because he can’t help himself.

They start playing chess again, but her hand still sits in his own. He doesn’t mention it.

* * *

They sit in the library sometimes, now. Stefan finds that Caroline is much more pensive these days, she speaks less and thinks more, and that means she’s different than the Caroline he fell in love with. It diminishes nothing, how could it? Stefan feels like Caroline is an addiction, sweet and whole and it fills him with this unattainable high and there’s no way he can ever walk away from her again, not now that he knows how she can make him feel. Caroline may be different, but she is still _Caroline_ , and he still loves her.

She reads a book, something light with a pink binding when Enzo waltzes in. He asks if they feel like saving Mystic Falls, and Damon and Elena stroll in behind him. Stefan shifts his eyes over to Caroline, they have not done anything like this in a while, it’s been quiet, peaceful, but Stefan sees a light in Caroline’s eyes and it lifts something inside of him. If Caroline wants to fight, Stefan will be there the whole time, right by there side.

Maybe it will be good for them.

* * *

For a while it _is_ good, Caroline has a fight in her that Stefan hadn’t realized was missing, but then the whole mission veers off course. They’re fighting off another clan of vampires, far too many of them, and they sweat with the urgency to protect their town, more importantly their lives (it may be a selfish way to think, but eternity changes one’s views of selfishness). Stefan struggles to watch her, too keep his eyes trailing her, when he is fighting for his own life. He wishes he didn’t have to worry for both of them, but he has accepted that burden for the rest of his life. He isn’t walking out again.

They’re doing surprisingly well, and Stefan has never been so happy for Enzo’s bloodlust as he takes vampire after vampire, never halting in his quick slashes and violent movements. He feels triumphant for a moment as he watches a body fall (it hits him that he has come too accustomed to the joy of another’s death, but he doesn’t know how to survive by holding the weight of another’s life anymore, not with the stockpile he carries so often), but then a loud scream echoes around them and Caroline is collapsing, collapsing, _collapsing_.

“Caroline!” he screams, and he knows it was him, the sound had ripped out of his own throat, but it sounds too primitive, too feral, to have come from him. He rushes forward, falling to his knees and feeling her face, her body, trying to figure out where the problem lies. She convulses and he panics. She’s a _vampire_ goddamnit, shouldn’t she be healing? But he sees a syringe poking out of her vein and he knows that there is something coursing through her, something bad.

Jo tells him she’ll be fine, and Stefan registers the words, sees that she is trying to look over her body, but it is hard to focus on what she is saying to him. It feels like there is a light being stamped out of Caroline as he watches her, and he can’t handle it if her light disappears, if _she_ disappears. He carries her back to her bedroom and lets Jo look over her, lets her help her, but then he sits next to her and holds her hand and hopes too hard that she wakes up.

* * *

Caroline is fine. She wakes up a day later, muttering something about _hating_ witches and their stupid spells (Stefan knows she doesn’t mean it, not really, because a glimmer passes over her eyes that reeks of the name Bonnie). Stefan grabs her tight, unable to contain himself, and makes her promise that she will not do that to him again. Her eyes soften, and she nods sadly, but they both know that they can not make such a promise.

* * *

They fight like a married couple now, sometimes, with words low and cracking, eyes crackling with fire and snapping words. Their faces bent low, their bodies close, and the words whip out like slaps. Sometimes Damon and Elena sit and watch, just for the joy, but when Caroline and Stefan finally yell the last words and storm off in angry huffs, they always split up and try to heal over the small wound that has been created.

They fight like this now, over something miniscule but irritating, and as Caroline’s finger finds his chest, repeatedly jabbing into him, something inside of Stefan snaps. He halts her words with his lips, pushing into her. Her hands grab his face, pulling him as close to her body as she possibly can. Their fight continues through their movements, their lips, and Stefan keeps pushing, pushing himself into every part of her he can manage. They topple to a couch, their bodies pressing perfectly together and Stefan thinks she tastes like sunshine, sunshine and fire.

She pulls back first, breathing in and out and Stefan thinks this might be his new favorite Caroline, face flushing and chest rising and falling with an erratic quickness, absolutely glowing. Her hand finds the side of his face, caressing a trail as she rewards him a soft smile, the kind that holds a healthy measure of mischief.

“I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you, too,” Stefan admits, and it feels like everything has been building to this for moment. Caroline’s smile spreads to the beam and Stefan breaks that off too, smiling and kissing and Caroline Forbes is too _much_ and he thinks he is probably not enough but they _love_ each other, and if that isn’t a miracle Stefan doesn’t know what is.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Check me out on tumblr if you want -> [castielscrusade](http://castielscrusade.tumblr.com/)


End file.
